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Google Pay reimagined: pay, save, manage expenses and more
- kyrra 6y ago(Googler, opinions are my own. I also work on backend payment systems there). Also, this is a copy/paste from the other thread that never hit the front-page. A fun technical piece here is that this expands on the Google Pay for India app, which is built on Flutter for android and iOS[0]. As well, it's great to see Plex (bank accounts) officially announced, though it was talked about ~1 year ago here[1]. [0] https://developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/google-pay-picks-flutter-to-drive-its.html https://developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/google-pay-picks-f... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21523335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21523335
- qmarchi 6y ago(Googler, opinions are my own. I work in Cloud) I've been using the new pay app, linked with my personal account on Simple, and have been stunned with how well it determines what businesses I'm paying. Splitting bills is nice too :P
- tadfisher 6y agoSimpleton working on the Android client here. You guys did a decent job! The Plaid flow is a little quirky, but it's like that for us as well.
- jklinger410 6y ago>That’s why we’re working with trusted financial institutions to create Plex, a new mobile-first bank account integrated into Google Pay. Plex is already a product.
- josteink 6y ago> Plex is already a product. As long as Google controls your search results, it doesn’t have to be so. Maybe tomorrow or a month from now Plex as we all know it (because they didn’t cancel their product 5 times the last 10 years) won’t exist in a meaningful way in your Google search results.
- dudus 6y agoAre you talking about the video broadcast app?
- dbbk 6y agoNothing close to a bank account. It's completely normal for products in different industries to have the same name.
- tylorr 6y agoGoogle got rid of automated Google Fi group payment splitting/management, does this add a feature that will replace that?
- qmarchi 6y agoStart a group, tap "Split a bill", I've been using it for my Fi group for a bit now.
- thesuperbigfrog 6y agoGoogle already has too much info from email, location tracking, and search history. Getting into bank accounts is too much. It would let them know exactly how effective advertising is since they would see how money is spent and they already know what advertisements they show you. Sorry, but no. Hard pass from me.
- ra7 6y agoThey say your transaction history with Google Pay won't be used in other Google services. How much you trust that is up to you.
- mediumdeviation 6y agoThey said the same thing about DoubleClick and YouTube. The amount of trust you should give to Google's words is zero.
- emmelaich 6y agoDid they though? Do you have a link for us?
- thesuperbigfrog 6y agoIt is too tempting for Google to pass up. It is only change in "terms of service" away after enough people are using it. The Google Rewards app is always wanting a photo of receipts when I pay with a credit card. Why would this be any different, especially when they would have access to the data so easily?
- aeortiz 6y agonot at the beginning, but they reserve the right to change their TOS anytime.
- d1zzy 6y agoAnd you will know when that happens and then you can stop using the service.
- apapli 6y agoI really admire Google, but they have become notorious for their “fast fail” mentality and product sun setting. No matter how good this may be I don’t trust google to not close this down or make major modifications that could cause issues in 1,3,5+ years from now. So it’s a reluctant “no thanks” from me, as I really wish they would plan their product portfolio more long term than history so far demonstrates.
- bberenberg 6y agoComing to a Google Graveyard near you in 202X.
- topkeks 6y agole epic reddit comment am i right ;)
- stephencoyner 6y agoThe UI seems quite slow. When changing tabs or scrolling there is a noticeable delay. Feels about 60% like a native app. I noticed someone in this thread say its built with Flutter which is cool to see! Hopefully it can compete with native sometime soon.. in the meantime this isn't there yet Edit: Testing on iOS right now
- ficklelife 6y agoThere's a big Flutter issue (since May) with jank on iOS - https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/32170 https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/32170, personally can't wait for this one to be resolved.
- benbristow 6y agoSounds like Plex is their competition to the likes of Fintech 'challenger' banks in the UK (Monzo/Starling). Wonder if they'll bring it over here.
- rkagerer 6y agoThose screenshots already showcase inline harassments like "Target 5% cashback deal expiring soon!" Hurry up and shop! What a spoiled opportunity. Google could have done something really innovative and useful here, but it smells like just another advertising channel to me. No thank you.
- piercebot 6y agoI use Google Pay for touchless payments with my phone. I like it for that. I use other solutions for tracking spending and organizing finances. If these features help somebody gain personal insights or build some financial literacy, I view that as a good thing.
- mking1024 6y agoNeat concept but I've been burned too many times already by Google killing or deprecating products.
- judge2020 6y agoOn a fairly unrelated note, the link shortener situation at Google is all over the place. When you refer people to Google Pay, the link is shortened to "g.co/payinvite/<code>", google images sharing goes to "images.app.goo.gl", google search is "g.co/kgs", and Google Pay profile sharing is "gpay.app.goo.gl".
- londons_explore 6y agoDon't worry - there's probably three different teams working on competing link shorteners... Don't forget the internal ones that occasionally leak into external support articles... shortn/, go/, and goto.corp.google.com/... And maybe more I haven't seen...
- urbandw311er 6y agoFeel a bit sorry for the authors of Plex Media streaming software who woke up today to discover that their SEO is now ruined, and trademarks worthless.
- judge2020 6y agoThis is in relation to banking, so I imagine searching "plex media" will still show plex.tv next year or will show up under Google Pay's 'Plex' like pandora currently does[0]. 0: https://goo.gl/search/pandora https://goo.gl/search/pandora
- SomewhatLikely 6y agoYou live by the short name, you die by the short name. Trademarks protect against consumer confusion. I'm not sure there would be much confusion here.
- novaleaf 6y agoboth are digital services both have accounts you can manage on your device Yes different services, but there is significant chance of confusion. "login with your plex account".
- JxLS-cpgbe0 6y agoA Googler already said "Plex (bank accounts)" in the comments here, I think that's going to be its unofficial name. Google Pay doesn't show up if you search for "Plex" on the Play Store! > Plex Account I already have a Plex Account. What is my Plex Account's app name? Plex or Google Pay?
- kyrra 6y agoGoogler, opinions are my own. Google Plex I think is the official name, but it looks to be tied specifically to Google Pay. The code name that WSJ talks about is "cache", so Plex is the real name. But as the app shows, you would get a "Citi Plex Account". Naming is hard.
- spurgu 6y agoLooks like they're taking a page from Revolut's (and/or N26, whatever others) playbook.
- judge2020 6y ago> When using a debit card, please carry out a signature-debit transaction. Do not enter a PIN when using a debit card if you want your transaction to be applied towards your offer completion. Can't using a chip card to receive rewards apparently.
- lxgr 6y agoWhy not? A card having or lacking a chip is orthogonal to transactions being processed as debit or credit.
- generalk 6y agoBooted the new GPay app on my Android phone this morning. "Sorry, Enterprise accounts are not supported on Google Pay." I've been doing NFC payments through Google Pay for years with the current Google Pay app, so this is kind of a surprise. Also, I do not have an "Enterprise account." I have a GAFYD account from around 2006. Over time Google's turned it into some limited bullshit account, and at this point I'd pay them just to turn all that shit off and turn me into a regular Google account -- or just close the damn thing down if I could transfer all the stuff I've purchased, which Google won't allow me to do. My fault for trusting Google, but the landscape was way different in 2006.
- joekrill 6y agoI'm in the same situation. This used to happen often, years ago when they first introduced GAFYD, and I haven't had an issue in a long time. But looks like things are reverting back now.
- generalk 6y agoI've been having issues for a while. Couldn't sign up for Youtube TV with my main account. I could sign up for Google Play Music (formerly Google Music, now RIP) but I couldn't sign up for a family account. Stuff like that. It gets frustrating after a while.
- stochastician 6y agoWhat the hell, I just tried this and it turns out to be true. Sometimes I think I should go work for google for a year just so I could rage internally about this sort of shit. I too have a GAFYD account I've been paying for since 2009.
- haxney 6y ago(Googler here, opinions are my own) People do rage internally about this. Unsurprisingly, a lot of current Google employees were early adopters of new Google features.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pornel 6y agoClever. Add a UI to Google Pay, and suddenly you have a not-obviously-creepy justification for retaining and mining all payment information forever.
- Whitespace 6y ago> Most importantly, Google Pay will never sell your data to third parties or share your transaction history with the rest of Google for targeting ads. I seriously doubt this, but I find it interesting that they address the elephant in the room in the launch announcement. I wonder how many other Google launches will note this as a perk before the hammer comes down from up high?
- kevincox 6y agoDisclaimer: I used to work at Google. If it it written in the privacy policy or similar I would trust it. Of course that doesn't mean it will never change in the future.
- damnencryption 6y agoThe only problem with that is how googles tries to have one single privacy policy for all their products and use it in their points for services which have separate policies. :/ It's messy and often misleading for an average consumer.
- sorenjan 6y agoI see that they've added integrated chat. If Google would've had a coherent chat app strategy they could've integrated it there, but I guess separate chats in every app is almost as good. There's no chance I'd use a service like this from Google by the way. I would probably had been interested if it had come from Google 15 years ago, but they have too much badwill since then, with all their cancelled services and stories of banned accounts.
- moneywoes 6y agoNailed it. Why would I use this over cashapp or venmo?
- geomark 6y agoWell, Venmo is owned by PayPal. So there's that. Also US only I believe.
- anonymousCar 6y agoWhat's the argument here vs. paypal?
- pjc50 6y agoThis appears to include an API to bank accounts, so perhaps it's trying to compete with companies like Starling or Monzo. If it can disrupt the paleolithic US consumer banking industry it might end up being a net positive.
- pmoriarty 6y agoGoogle's brand has become synonymous with privacy violation. Their services are designed to suck everything knowable about you like an information vampire.
- achow 6y agoThis should not be seen as chats, but transaction documentation. The dialogs associated with informal or semi-formal transactions may not belong in your personal chat space; quite often that set of dialogs exists only before and during the transactions and never after that. > ..but they have too much badwill since then.. Google pay is the market leader in India in fintech. It is perhaps most trusted brand. The notion of "Google is evil", "Kills of products so would not use its services" only exist in HN bubble, if we leave this space and go to emerging markets Google absolutely rules.
- leavenotracks 6y agoA more convenient way for google to access my financial information?? No thanks, no thanks.
- Entaroadun87 6y agolooks like a nod to venmo
- kevindeasis 6y agoDefinitely cool! Theres only a very few things that they need to introduce, you guys prob know what it is. Once they do that, a lof of competitors will definitely start sweating... I love my apple card, but kinda gets annoying on days when i have to switch to an android
- criddell 6y agoYou want to run all your purchases through a system run by an advertising company? There's no way I would do that.
- personlurking 6y agoThere's going to be a lot of competition around CBDC/FedCoin wallet apps in 2021. With this update, Google Pay might be positioning themselves. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-brainard-idUSKBN1ZZ2XF https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-brainard-idUSKBN1... https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/3571/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/357...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ac29 6y agoWhy 2021? The Fed moves pretty slowly. The legislation you linked has not passed the House or Senate (it doesnt appear to even have been voted on).
- swiley 6y agoI'll move to the Yukon before I put something as important as money in another platform controlled by a schizophrenic marketing driven company like google.
- nashashmi 6y agoIt’s supposed to be a social network made around money relationships. It’s like google plus all over again. Except this time with the promotion of businesses. as someone who uses google for personal people to people communication and platform, Seeing my favorite free service provider take this route to what is unarguably a data collection scheme is deeply disheartening.
- nottorp 6y agoWould you like to take payments over a system that can automatically ban you for unspecified reasons, and where there is no possibility of appealing to a human?
- seneca 6y agoNo way in hell I would let Google anywhere near my financial information, regardless of some empty promise while they're trying to get a new app off the ground. I can't think of another brand that has managed to lose as much trust and goodwill as Google. I've gone from excited about everything they announce to working to actively remove them from my life, and encouraging others to do the same. Die a hero or live long enough to become the villain, I suppose.
- kyriakos 6y agoWhy does Google pay has a much smaller international availability than apple pay?
- osipovas 6y agoWhy did they call them Plex? Come on Google! Plex is already a trademark.
- fomine3 6y agoSo Googleplex?
- donor20 6y agoIf you are on an iphone 12 the difference between native apps (liquid smooth so far in my experience - basically perfect) and flutter apps is striking! Get ready for JANK on iOS. Or maybe just me. Flutter looks cool, but they really should make iOS a first class target platform at some point.
- londons_explore 6y agoThis could be solved simply... When the UX designers make a mockup of an app, instead of making mock screenshots, make mock videos. Then tell the software engineer to match those mocks. If some animation drops three frames at the start, then the code doesn't meet the mocks, and isn't ready to ship.
- remir 6y agoIn 2020, a simple app like this shouldn't be janky in the first place. If software engineers, at Google no less, need a mock video to understand that the UI should be smooth, then there's a big problem.
- lxgr 6y agoOh, so I wasn't imagining UI stuttering on my iPhone 11 with the new app. I've never seen that in any other app for that matter... Is Google using Flutter in their other apps as well?
- donor20 6y agoIt weird, because Apple really has prioritized smooth animations (on iphone 12 at least it really feels VERY smooth). Why not at least match them - they've demonstrated I think reasonably that people value stuff like this. The power of the chips in these little things is insane, I also don't understand how my old Windows 3.11 machine had less stutter than these new things.
- cutler 6y agoGreat. Our last shred of privacy sold to Google for the convenience of digital payments. People, wake up!
- cute_boi 6y agogoogle is just a joke. They blocked like $5 worth of gift card and it took me like 3 month with 20-30 emails and 4 voice call to unlock it. Google is so evil tbh.
- ushuz 6y ago...and will be sunset in 18 months
- troughway 6y agoSo Google finally forced my hand yesterday regarding the Google Play Music closing. I’ll be moving to Apple Music or whatever it’s called. Like most of the other people here, I have zero faith in that company running a project for any reasonable amount of time. All the “Googlers” here should stop hiding behind their monitors every time a bad story comes out, and show some spine once in awhile. It’s all fun and games when a product is launched. How about you show some initiative when we tell you to quit shutting shit down. Or is that suddenly not your problem?
- _the_inflator 6y agoSo Google Pay is now trying to be a Facebook Relationship Graph? I like the day of grouping money exchange this way. My current banking app only allows to sort by time. You lose track which whom you most often exchange money, which can lead to better offers.
- calrain 6y agoThey have to first solve the "I'm sorry but your account has been permanently banned and you have no recourse" issue before they'll get me using it for any serious payments.
- rendall 6y agoA Google ban would be immediately devastating to me, but I would certainly recover over time. I could weather losing family photos, 15 years of emails, calendar, not to mention countless 3rd-party services I verified with my Gmail address that I'd have to deal with. Add financial services into the mix? Especially banking? Gah, I cannot imagine. It would wreck me. I cannot responsibly use Google Pay for anything other than paying for Google services.
- someonehere 6y agoHow long before this hits the Google Graveyard?